You Are Not Here (14 page)

as she comes up beside me.

“Yeah. I guess so,”

I say even though I’ve been here

so many times since she saw me last.

“Looks like you’ve got the right idea sitting.

Down isn’t so much the problem.

Will you give me a lift in a little while?”

“Sure,” I say

as she awkwardly lowers herself down.

“Hello there, Brian.

I’m with your nice friend, Annaleah.

You’re missing a beautiful day here.

But I bet it’s real nice where you are too.

You be sure to say hello to my Joey.

And let him know

that I am thinking about him too.”

I’ve never heard anyone speak

at a graveside like this before.

Like me.

Freda sees my amazement.

“Do you talk to him too?” she asks.

“Sometimes.”

“I think talking

about good times helps.

What do you say?”

There were

good times.

But there were bad times too.

And a lot of nothing times.

“All sorts of things, I guess.

But mostly, what it’s like

without him.”

“You were more than just friends.”

She doesn’t ask it.

She says it.

The recognition

that I’ve been waiting for.

Tears well up in my eyes.

“Do you come to talk to him a lot?”

“Almost every day.”

“Oh, honey,” she says

as she takes my hand in hers.

“It’s important to remember Brian,

to keep him in your heart,

and to visit with him.

But this isn’t a place for every day.

Nothing grows here

besides grass.”

She moves her hand to my back

and alternately rubs and pats.

I am crying harder now.

I don’t want her to feel me shaking,

but I don’t want her to take her hand away either.

I look around and think about what she said:

Nothing grows here.

She’s right.

This isn’t a place for growth.

It’s a place to look back on the past.

that my dad left.

I cannot control

that Brian died.

But I can control

if I choose to maintain my friendships.

I can control

if I try to be closer to my mom.

I can control

whether or not

I get to know Ethan better.

There are spaces in my heart

that are being filled

by what could have been with Brian,

and the stories

about my father and the Dearly Departed.

I think I need to free up some of that space

for the people in my life

that are actually here.

I need to not keep that space reserved

for people who are never coming.

Across it I’ve written,

I’m sorry for being such a freak.

Ethan picks it up and smiles.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I don’t know.

Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Are we okay?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then…

here are your slices for table seven.”

And just like that,

we are

okay.

to write a happy list—

the small things in life

that make me happy.

The first thing on the book’s sample list

is puppies and kittens.

I can’t help but laugh.

Are they kidding?

But I guess laughing

puts me in a better mood to do this.

So here goes:

Garlic knots.

Soft sheets that smell like detergent.

Stars in a clear night sky.

Getting texts from friends.

Fireflies and crickets.

Brian’s eyes.

Strawberry ice cream.

Sitting in the sun.

My jeans with the hole in the knee.

Making friends laugh.

Seeing Ethan smile.

Sun showers.

My beat-up white Converse.

Pink roses in bloom.

Joy asks as we sit on her bed.

“I don’t know.

Ethan is fun to be around.

And cute. But—”

“Lee, it’s not like you need to decide

if you want to marry him.

It’s more simple.

Are you curious to see

where it might go?”

Where can it go?

All sorts of tragic scenes come to mind.

Car accidents. Fires.

Ethan disappearing.

Me being left, devastated.

“I don’t know if I’m ready.

I don’t think I could handle

the disappointment.”

“Lee, you can handle a lot.

You made it through this summer.

What could be harder than that?”

“I guess.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.

I’ll think about it.”

Joy throws a glittery pillow at my head.

“Thinking never got anyone anywhere.”

eating lunch in the back.

We are squeezed together.

His shirt is touching my arm.

Our knees are inches from each other.

I want to close the gap,

the painful gap.

I cross my legs the other way

to fill the space.

My knee lands against his.

Contact.

I can finally breathe.

that talks about relaxation.

It suggests that when you are in bed

you try imagining

being on a beach or in a field

with the warm sun on your face.

I never did the exercise,

but right now I’m on a work break,

actually sitting outside in the sun,

so I give it a try.

I shut my eyes

and try to remember what the book said—

something about letting in the rays of sunlight

to help get rid of the dark.

Immediately, the
Sesame Street
theme song

creeps into my head and makes me smile:

“Sunny day, sweepin’ the clouds away…”

Okay. Focus.

This is serious.

I shut my eyes again.

I feel the sun hitting my face,

warming the top of my head.

Behind my eyelids, all I see is bright yellow.

The longer I sit,

the brighter the yellow grows,

the warmer I feel.

The more the tension in my shoulders

melts away.

I try to focus only on that—

the warmth and the yellow.

And for a few moments,

that’s all there is.

He asks me if I want

to hang out

and I say yes.

Being with Ethan

feels different.

Talking to him

and having him

talk back to me.

Looking at him

and having him

look back at me.

And then there are the times

when we touch.

They’re just accidental bumps

or nudges,

but it feels amazing.

We stop and sit.

The grass is speckled with dandelions,

the kind that have turned white and poofy.

I pick one up,

twirl the stem between my fingers.

“Make a wish,” he says.

“Really?”

“Go on. I’ll do it too.”

We both pause for a moment,

then blow.

The seeds scatter in the air,

then float back down like tiny parachutes.

“What’d you wish for?” he asks.

“I can’t tell you.

It won’t come true.”

“Well, fine then.

I won’t tell you my wish either.”

He fake-pouts like a little kid.

It’s getting late,

nearly dinner when Ethan says,

“I better go.

I’m having people over tonight—

kind of an end-of-summer party.

You should come,

if you can.”

as I try to get dressed for Ethan’s party.

I can’t decide what to wear,

mostly because I am too busy

imagining what it’d be like to kiss him.

This image makes my heart

flutter.

It makes between my legs

flutter.

I feel all of this energy

going through me.

I have not been able to sit still all night.

My fingers tap the table.

My toes tap the floor.

I cannot focus.

My chest feels tight

but instead of anxiety,

I feel excitement.

standing on his back deck,

wearing an untucked button-down and jeans.

It’s a treat to see him again in real clothes

and not those horrid checkered pants.

Crowds of people are around

and below him.

But he seems sort of oblivious.

He’s just staring up at the dark sky.

He sees me coming and nods at the stars,

“Should we make a wish?”

“What’s with you and the wishes today?”

He just shrugs and points up into the darkness.

“I’m wishing on that one.

Which one are you going to wish on?”

“That one,”

I say, pointing upward.

We are quiet for a moment

before he asks,

“So…what’d you wish for?”

“Ethan, we’ve been through this.”

“Okay, okay,” he says.

“How about we each

write down our wish,

then exchange.

When we are both home

and getting into bed,

we can look.”

I laugh.

I didn’t figure him for the cheesy type.

“All right,” I say

and he goes into the house

and comes back with paper and pens.

I write:

I wish that we had kissed this afternoon.

My heart races as I write those eight words.

I think about ripping up the paper

and rewriting something less risky,

but don’t.

I take a deep breath,

take his note,

and he takes mine.

I head home.

Partly because I don’t know anyone there

besides Ethan and Lou.

But mostly because I’m dying to read the note.

I can feel it in my back pocket.

It is an itch on my skin

that I have to scratch.

The farther I walk from Ethan’s house,

the more the itch begins to burn.

I make it three blocks before I stop

and take the note out of my pocket.

As I unfold it, my heart pounds.

I’m excited to see what it says.

I hope that it’s about me,

but I’m scared

that it will be something dumb, like

I wish for world peace,

and I will be humiliated.

And then the note is open

and I am reading it

and it says:
To kiss you
.

And before I realize it,

I am running.

Running

the three blocks back to Ethan’s house,

and then I am through his front door,

scanning the faces, looking for him.

And then I am out the back door,

and on the back deck.

I see Lou and ask if he’s seen Ethan.

He says he saw him in the backyard.

And then I am down the stairs,

and searching for Ethan’s face again.

He doesn’t see me coming at first,

but when he does, he looks confused.

In one quick motion,

I put my hand on his chest,

push him into the shadows under the deck,

and then I am kissing him.

And it is amazing.

Just the right mix

of hard and soft.

After a little while,

I can feel him smiling,

and I pull back.

“You cheated,” he says.

“You didn’t wait until you got home.”

“You didn’t look?”

“No. Should I look now?”

“Yes.”

He reads the note, smiles,

then puts one hand on the side of my face,

the other on my neck,

and kisses me.

It is warm

and it is real.

to write a letter to Brian in heaven.

Dear Brian,

The last few months

have been a roller coaster.

Meeting you

and starting to get to know you

was really exciting.

But there were limits

on how close you let me get.

And I guess I did a bit of the same.

When we were together,

I was willing to take whatever you gave.

And after you died

I was able to see

how little that was.

I deserved

and still deserve

more.

I’m not sorry or regretful

about us.

There were good times.

I learned things about myself.

And it also made me see that memories—

real or imagined—

can’t make me whole.

I’ll never know

why you were the way you were.

I’ll never know if it was because of your dad.

Or if it was because you didn’t

like me enough.

But I’m going to have to learn

to be okay with not knowing.

Brian, I want you to be at peace

and I want that for myself too.

And I don’t think I’ll get that

if I keep visiting you like I have been.

It keeps me from growing.

So I’m writing to you

to tell you that I’m not

going to come around for a while.

I’ll still think of you.

You’ll still be the first guy

I ever really cared about.

But I’ve got to let you go.

Now what?

It’s not like I can look up

the address for heaven in the White Pages

and put a stamp on this

and drop it in the mail.

I know this letter was for me.

But I still want to do something with it.

The death book suggests

that I fold it into a paper airplane

or put it in a bottle and send it out to sea.

But I have another idea.